End of Year Report

Farewell 2009 - you looked so stylish with your double zeros and a flaunty number nine on the end!

I've known better, happier years but I've also known years of absolute sorrow (1994 was a doozy and 2006 wasn't much better...) but I digress...

2009 was, in the most part, a pretty good year with fun times with family and friends, sadly not documented by this blog (mea culpa folks..) We had an amazing winter including snow and then a summer of hot sunny days. Wet spring days and, of course, plenty of wet autumn days (but thankfully NO record breaking snowy autumn days like 2008)

I had planned to recap the year's events - the good and the not so good but then I thought, well why?

I'm always reflective at the end of the year and to be completely candid I'm not a huge fan of New Years Eve - the countdown and the lamentable Auld Lang Syne. Probably even more so since I moved to the West Coast of the USA where I get that sense we are somewhat late to the party as the rest of the world has already celebrated the brand new year before us! Thank goodness for our sweet friends the Wilkies who make it fun!

A sweet friend (ok.. it's YOU Eleanor) said on her Facebook page today: "Why look back, when each new day holds so much potential for such profound joy?"

Ain't that the truth.

It's a start of a brand new decade too!

I've spent the last decade looking back at WHO I used to be, WHAT I used to be and WHERE I used to be and to what purpose? Yet, here I be - the sum total of all that I've done and all that I've lived.

Yep, 2009 had its share of regrets and heartache but it also had moments of immense joy.

I'm looking forward to the New Year and as I'm short on good quotes (save sweet Eleanor's above) I'll leave with you this:

"For last year's words belong to last year's language. And next year's words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning." – T.S. Eliot

I'm looking forward to making some new beginnings...welcome 2010.

Happy New Year to my dear friends and family - wishing you peace, hope and joy

What a difference a year makes....

White Christmas? Not this year!

(Front of our house after the snowstorms of 2008 and after much shoveling of snow!)

Christmas Eve 2008

Christmas Eve 2009 - sunny and blue skies

~ Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas,
Happy-whatever-you-celebrate-Day!
and Peace and Blessings for 2010 ~

Band of Gold II

Gosh, these crash diets really work.....voila....!

(I wish...)

Nope, this is my late mum's wedding ring, which has been locked away since her death and it fits me perfectly.

I shall wear it until I can wear my own wedding band again and I'm taking my sweet mum along for the journey.

Night!

(Editors Note: Darren called this "You're wearing-your-mother's-wedding-ring-and-now-you-feel-much -better" blog and for the first time this weekend, he'd be right!

Band of Gold......

That is my bare hand.

My bare left hand.

My bare wedding ring finger on said hand.

If you take a close up of that left middle finger you'll see all that remains of where my wedding ring used to be - a nice indentation mark.

Note: relax, I've not taken flight to England, bags packed and a ceremoniously flinging of the wedding ring across Sea-Tac airport runway as I head home, kicking and screaming...!

I removed my wedding ring the other night after Darren noticed that it looked....well... rather too tight. Never one to be subtle, and Lord knows I didn't marry Darren for his TACT, he asked me if it felt uncomfortable. I said no and yet when I came to move it, it would not budge. Stuck firmly on my now pudgy fingers.

Darren placed that band of gold on my finger on our wedding day on May 24, 1998 in beautiful Healdsburg, California and it's not left my finger since; not even through two pregnancies, which saw me balloon in size (both times) and yet fortunately my fingers remained relatively unscathed and so did my wedding ring. I have not removed my wedding ring even to paint the house, do chores, bathe the kids etc - never.

Seven years after the birth of my youngest child those postpartum curves are now lost in an increasingly expanding waistline, reflected in a scale that continues to climb as steadily as the candles on my birthday cake (though exponentially it would appear!)

My sweet father in law would tease me about my weight when I first married his son but has since stopped doing so; I presume because the fat jokes are no longer funny when the spare tire I was sporting back then has since been replaced by a whole Hummer.

I'd be lying if I said it doesn't depress the heck out of me and yet I'm not unhappy about being fat 'cause the truth is I'm fat because I'm unhappy as most 'larger' folk would tell you. No, we don't sit and gorge our faces with food, or sit on the couch watching soap operas 24/7; ironically we are too busy managing the dramas of others in our lives to even notice that we are creating one of our very own.

And so here I be... ring-less, save from an intricate pattern that circulates my bare left finger, which has yet to fade. Darren and I laughingly said that perhaps I should have a tattoo in place of a wedding ring which would expand with me (and you wonder why the man was single all those years...! ) But right now, it has become somewhat of a symbol of all that is not quite right in my world and a reminder that somehow I've simply not found the time to take care of me.

So as 2010 approaches, I'll not be re-sizing that ring nor will I be using any bonuses on a brand new one to replace it. I'm going to use that little band of gold as a tangible reminder that the girl who first wore that ring is still there (albeit buried under a few layers!) and I'm bloody well going to find her.

Happy New Year!

Nut-crackered...

Well, Jewel and I survived another Nutcracker season and I write this with trepidation because the season isn't yet over and although Jewel's cast ("A") has completed their run, there are still three or four more shows remaining of the season, so I will secretly pray that Jewel's "twin" stays fit and well and she will not have to fill in.... it's been a long eight weeks or so!

I cannot lie - I loathe and detest the scheduling nightmare that is Jewel's now annual foray into the performing arts. This year Jewel was a party girl and true to the Victorian period in which The Nutcracker is set, she had the hair curls to match - all forty of them, beautifully rolled and curled prior to each and every performance and enough hairspray (appropriately called "Freeze It") to remove most of the ozone layer over Seattle.

Last year when I worked the dressing room for the Nutcracker shows, I dressed many of the party girls and would listen to their individual horror stories; "I was in the chair for FIVE hours while mum curled my hair"; "I would simply cry my eyes out as the rollers were pulled from my head". Or overhear some of the mothers who would triumphantly state that their sweet daughters had watched movies like "Harry Potter" on a loop at least TWICE while they painstakingly attempted to recreate those darn Victorian curls and I thought right then and there, I hope and pray Jewel will NOT be a party girl the following year.

Back in October when auditions were taking place and casting was in full swing, I tentatively suggested to the ballet mistress that I thought Jewel would make a fabulous reindeer. Let's see, they wear a nice brown leotard, brown tights and head gear and not a curl in sight. They can show up about half an hour before curtain is up and have few rehearsals: "Look at her long limbs" I told one mother. "Wouldn't she make an awesome reindeer?!" The mother laughed and told me I was probably the only 'stage mother' who would wish her daughter on stage in antlers over a pretty silk dress with petticoats, but trust me....!

And so it was Jewel was a party girl this season and a pretty one at that. The rehearsals, the tantrums, the two to three hour hair curling sessions (usually with tears - hers and mine!) the almost two hour pre-performance arrival times before the rest of the cast for hair and make up and the poor Diva sleeping in dozens of rollers most nights, were all ultimately worth it.

As I dressed Jewel for her first performance in Edmonds last week and walked her and her fellow cast mates backstage to wait in the wings for that beautiful Tchaikovsky score to commence, she looked at me, gave me the thumbs up and walked on stage, with those pretty curls bouncing behind her and never looked back. I took a sharp intake of breath as the lights hit her pretty blonde curls and, as she danced so sweetly, I was overcome with pride.

And I thought - you know what? It was all worth it!

That said.. next year... I think she'd make a fab soldier - they wear a helmet!

I Believe in Father Christmas..

Last week, while picking up my favourite Starbucks' Holiday themed beverage of choice this time of year, a Peppermint Mocha, the sweet Barista passed me a free CD: "All you Need is Love". Yes, I had managed to spend a tidy sum on a drive thru' run with the kids and was entitled to benefit from the latest marketing ploy of the sweet ol' Mermaid, which is by spending over $15 on their over priced beverages, I had donated $1 to the Global Fund and could have a free (RED)™ CD of exclusive tracks by U2, Dave Matthews Band, John Legend and a mixed band of singers, who somehow manage to 'kill' the title track of "All You Need is Love".

Jewel and Schyler asked me to play the CD in the car on the drive home and so we listened to the four (yes, a "generous" four) tracks. When U2's "I Believe in Father Christmas" track came on, I smiled and got very nostalgic about my childhood Christmases. The original song by Greg Lake had been a huge hit when I was a kid and was played every Christmas as part of the season's annual soundtrack (that and Slade's "Merry Christmas Everybody"- relentlessly....!) It remains a favourite Holiday song, now that I'm in my forties.

It's funny because now we can Google anything; we get instant gratification thanks to iTunes and more importantly we can really dissect lyrics by downloading them from the Internet and as I sung along to the U2's cover of a much loved song, the realization hit me that the song was far from a happy Xmas song of my childhood, but rather cynical and with two children, still loving the spirit of the Holidays (Santa et al...) I was not about to enlighten them, so changed the track to the more reliable Dave Matthews!

But it made me think how terribly innocent we were back then. I was probably around twelve or thirteen years old when the song "I Believe in Father Christmas" was released. I've no doubt I'd long figured out certain truths about the day itself but I was much less cognizant of any other messages within that song. Jewel is nine and I know that when she is twelve, she will be way more sophisticated than I was at the same age. I know she'll have a greater awareness of the world around her, but sadly she'll also be aware of the less pleasant things in life. At nine, she already has way too much knowledge about how drugs can devastate a family and that sometimes good people do bad things. At twelve, I still played with dolls and remained resolutely clueless about the world outside my bedroom door and you know what, perhaps that was a good thing?

So I wish you a Merry Christmas ~ I wish you Happy Holidays ~ I wish you a Happy Chanukah ~ I wish you a Happy Kwanzaa!

But more importantly I wish you whatever you wish yourself this season.

And I think I do still believe in Father Christmas....

Making Traditions..

We had a spiffy and fun-filled Thanksgiving again this year. Thanks in part to our dear friends and neighbours, The Wilkies...

It's funny because even though I've lived in the USA almost twelve years, I've never been too much bothered by Thanksgiving. I mean, I didn't celebrate too many Thanksgivings in jolly ol' England now did I?!!

Thanksgiving always feels like a pause before the craziness of the month of December and Christmas madness (though who am I kidding - our nearest Hallmark store had Xmas cards appearing on their shelves at the beginning of October!) Regardless, the Holiday has never stressed me out and this year we opted to have the most stress free Holiday of all by buying our turkey dinner ready cooked and prepped from our local PCC (a local natural supermarket) in advance of the day.

So stress free, I popped into the supermarket the day before to pick up our turkey dinner box and was met by a couple of harassed staff, who were dealing with an equally harassed customer, who was pulling her box apart and removing the contents one by one, apparently unimpressed by the NASA-looking vacuumed packed bags of mashed potatoes, gravy and cranberry relish etc. I happily picked up my box, paid for the goodies and looked forward to a stress free Thanksgiving Day.

And stress-free it was.

We sat around almost all day twiddling our thumbs! No need to get up at the crack of dawn and prep and roast the turkey. No peeling vegetables, prepping stuffing or decimating the kitchen and yet, we were..um kind of bored! Ha! I guess the chaos is very much a part of the Turkey Day and we kind of missed it as re-heating all those bags and pre-cooked turkey means you condense the stress into one chaotic hour instead!

That said we enjoyed a lovely evening with the Wilkies and ate till we were stuffed. Good conversation and good fun, culminating in our now annual tradition of going downtown to watch the tree lighting and fireworks the day after Thanksgiving; sipping warm hot chocolate with sprinkles and eating divine cookies at The Mayflower, followed by dinner with friends at the Irish pub, Kell's in Pike Place Market. Bless Seattle - it somehow rises to the occasion and creates wonderful memories and new traditions in the process, even for this English gal....

Happy Holidays...!

Jewel and Schyler at The Mayflower Hotel, November 27th, 2009